M15x & 6970M / 6990M - What you need to know - upgrading, problems, solutions

Thanks Migualo! In this case it may be the M18x vbios, which I haven't tried so far... didn't know there was really a difference.

Would be appreciated if you could upload it, destinymax.

 

me too would love to get a copy of that vbios.

 

It's my pleasure
Here it is, I saved it by GPU-Z and named it destinymax.bin, at the same time there is another M17x-R3 vbios I got from our Chinese forum(maybe it will be helpful to someone) I will upload it together.

 

Nibitor says this is the same as migualo uses, there's only one file in the archive. Where's your vbios?

Edit: Btw, the best way to backup the vbios is using atiflash from a DOS bootable drive, this is the less likely to corrupt the vbios dump.

 

It's my false, I mistake the wrong file...here is mine.
I read it by RBE, and it likely a ealier version of 6970m from dell. It really has the clock 100/100.

 

You mean the vbios backup from GPU-Z is unavailable for others to flash it?
I really never used atiflash from a DOS bootable drive(Since I flashed vbios from dell, I remember that it need a drive less than 2GB?)

 

No, most of the times it works, but I had some issues with some Nvidia VBIOSes recently, they got corrupted when using GPU-Z to save them. Never had this issue with ATIflash, that's why I think it's the best way.

Did you flash the Dell vbios from the first post yet? I highly recommend making a backup of your original vbios before flashing the other one, it's very easy, just use the atiflash command I posted earlier.


The zip file you posted only contains one vbios and it seems to be the same as the one migualo uses, can you upload your vbios as well?

Edit: I've just seen that you changed the archive, I have the destinymax.bin now, will check it out, thanks!

 

Okay, your vbios seems to be a very early version... (I somehow expected this because of the vbios nr., but the date says 9/24/10 (!!!), "Reported chip type" says " FGL BLACKCOMB" and "hardware specs string" is " Barts XT C29602 Samsung 1GB MXM")

... the 2d clocks are set to 100/100 instead of 100/150


Did you check the vram on your card? Dell cards actually use Hynix vram... there are several possibilities to explain this... you either got a very early version of the card, or the card simply has a very early version of the vbios on it (and the hardware specs string is wrong), or (unlikely) it's not a Dell card. Where did you get it?

Do you have some pictures of the card?

Chances are, that your issues can be solved when you flash the vbios from the second post of this thread.

 

I will try by ATIflash now,thx. In fact, I flash my 5850m using the method like this before(The way is our forum administrator indicated, it is very easy and can flash the vbios at win7 instead of DOS)

 

That's up to you, but I really recomend using the DOS method, it's much safer and less likely to brick your card! There's so much less that can go wrong than when you flash in windows... !

Your vbios is interesting, BARTS XT was the codename for the desktop 6770.

 

here is my gpu-z screen shot of my dell card for reference

 

I forgot to check the vram, but I have some pictures. Recording to them, I am sure the card used Hynix vram. Another reason is that it in fact has no fan issue. So I guess it probably the DELL card. However, it may be a earlier version, and there has" ENG" on its core.(Someone told me the card with these letters is ES version?)

 

Where did you get your card?

ENG is indicating that it could be an engineering sample, which would also explain the very early BIOS version. If you're lucky you may be able to unlock some more shaders... hehehehehe

 

I bought it from a Chinese B2C/C2C web. It is the only DELL card I can find.
May be it's a ES one, so the card has the interesting vbios?
Here's the picture.

 

This really seems to be an engineering sample of a Dell card, cool! Hope it performs well.

The vbios isn't as interesting as the card imo, but it has some interesting information.
If I remember correctly, on ichimes card, the additional shaders didn't show up until he flashed it with more recent Dell vbios... but it was a Clevo ES afaik.

 

I feel this card draw more power than yours. Is it the clue that it has the additional shaders? I prepare to flash the R3 vbios now.

 

Maybe, but it could also be because of the very low idle memory clocks, or because of the beta vbios.

 

The answer will be discovered after I flash it.

 

6990m apears...

 

Congratz.....

 

Damn luckkyyyyyyy!!!!

 

but it has issue now...when I open the powerplay, its bus was X1 and run with a low clock;when I close it, the card becomes X16, but run with a lower clock

 

destinymax! We have the same card! Welcome to my world. What bios did you use to unlock the shaders?
Edit: by the way, just in case, here is my backup.rom with the original Dell M17x R3 vbios that works well with my card.

 

I used the vbios of M17x-R3 at the first floor .
How can I let the card run a normal clock?

 

Well first of all try flashing using the reboot method, its much more complete. I have my powerplay at max performance for plugged and max life for battery. One day in the future, I'm gonna buy that card off you and crossfire 6990m's together
PS I think we have the same card. It seems that mine (I got it from ichime) is also a Dell ES card as it uses Hynix ram chips. That would explain why the Clevo ES cards can't be unlocked.

 

6990m CF, it's really fantastic.
Which vbios and driver are you using now?

 

I'm using an undervolted version of the backup.rom that I posted. I'm also using the official 11.6 drivers from the Ati website. My advise to you is to uninstall your drivers, restart safe mode and clean with driver sweeper. Reflash the vbios and install the new drivers.

 

THX for your advice. And where is your backup.rom ...can you point its place?

 

It is in Dell.zip file that I attached earlier. Just scroll up...

 

Wow nice, Congrats on the awesome card.

 

oh bit of a tangent
here are the images i took before and after drilling the 6970m (to remove those damn buttons)

6970m images

sorry for the blurry image, my hands wouldn't keep still. should probably have taken more but i just couldn't wait to put that sucker in.

 

I just did as you said, but the issue still existd.
I have to try different drivers or vbios...

I found the reason, it beacuse of the "stealth mode"(I really didn't think it will available after exchanging the card...)After boot, I need to click the SM twice, then it will run at X16. But when notebook works above the 150W for a while, it will be restart as before. I have to undervolt the card.
widezu69, what's the volt do you using now?

 

Hehehe, magic! It's always worth investigating a bit...
Are there more of these cards for sale? Lol, no, I'm staying with mine, but I'm still curious.

You'll have to experiment a bit with the voltage, 1V should be fine, maybe 0.95V as well, but probably not. You should be able to test it with the ATI tray tools before flashing.

 

It is definitely has many problems. If the volt is high, the PSU will above 150w; if I under the volt, the card will be unstable...
This ES card may not fit for our M15x(will be better on a higher PSU notebook) The seller also has 3,maybe 4 this kind of cards. But I prefer a normal 6970m now.

 

You tried 1.05V as well? Hope you get it working.

You won't have a problem selling this card, but getting a Dell card for a decent price is difficult, there was one on ebay yesterday (I posted the link), but it's not available anymore.
But the Clevo cards are really cheap atm, and fan control isn't such a big thing with HWiNFO64

 

Hey what site did you get the card? Could I take a look?

 

I tried 1.05V, but didn't work well.
I don't worry about selling the card, because the seller agreed that I can return it to him after he knew it was a ES card.
I think I will use my 5850m atm and then try to find a original DELL card until the BF3 coming. At that time, if I haven't got a DELL card, I will exchange the CLEVO one.(with the HWiNFO64, fan issue really has not be a big problem)

 

Dunno if you saw my post but could I have the website? I can read Chinese.

 

i5 and 6970m must be too much for my 150w power brick. I was playing duke nukem forever and got that sudden shutdown twice. Is there a kind soul here who could mod me an 0.95v bios if that would help me out.

Is there any good tool that can show me temps and other info in-game with hotkey toggle.. I have tried ati tray tools but just cant seem to get it working. All i can get is the fps.

 

Did you do some testing with 0.95V? I can mod you a vbios, just tell me which one. Clevo, Dell, Sapphire/PCPartner?

About the in-game temps display, HWiNFO32 has a plugin, check it out. I haven't tried it so far.

 

Have you tried the fix I posted earlier about themal pads under the GPU where there are a few silicon chips? Apparently it helped with the 6970m in the W870CU.

 

Of course~ I have told the seller that the foreign friends wanna the cards.
He said "welcome~include the cost of deliver, the whole price may also be dcent. "He sold it only 2800￥=433＄
here's the link: http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=5637283548

someone just told me Ice Tea once installed the 6970m es on the W860cu. And before he deal with the 4 points as the picture, system would crash when the card will heavy load.

here's the words:
On to... sigh... the next proble. The W870CU comes with a 120W PSU. When doing the first benches, the computer cut out. Or rather, it did not. It kept running while the screen went black. The first possible culprit is obviously temperature... This led me to modify the heatsink a bit more untill I was certain the core was in perfect touch with the heatsink. Basically, if the core leaves a perfect heatpaste print on the heatsink, you're set.

That didn't work.

The core temperatures before the shutdown were low enough not to warrant such issues.. At this point, I ditched GPU-Z and moved to HWInfo. The difference is HWInfo adds memory temperature information. Which skyrocketed rather fast. Makes sense. Double memory density and all.

So, I removed the silicone based memory heatpads and moved to our 17W/mK high grade pads. Temperature was under control. Yay!

Or not.


The shutdown still occured.

So, next possible culprit: the PSU. Rated for only 120W, it's probably overloaded.. Dragged out the bench power supply. Unfortunately, it won't yield 20V but at 16.4V, it took a massive 140W, or almost 20% more than what the PSU is rated for.

And then it shutdown.

So, we got a 20V PSU.

And then it shutdown.

So, we turned it up a bit, up to 22V. If the shutdown was caused by overcurrent protection on the motherboard or MXM card, this would give 10% more headroom or 30% against the 16.4V PSU.

Still, a shutdown at exactly the same moment.


At this point, I could see two more reasons why things went wrong. Either another, non-monitored component on the card was going in overtemp protection or the card was just bad. It had to be components that consume a fair bit of power while being 'smart' enough to go in shutdown.

This excluded the FETs (first sign of those overheating would be that they fell off the board or went up in smoke, EEPROM, Crystal, logic... But not the DC/DC controllers. So we took the silicone pads we got from the memory and added them to the indicated parts.

As we were getting pretty damn tired of this, we replaced the HD6970 at the same time. Not the best for diagnostic purposes but it beats tossing the whole thing out of the window.

AND THAT FINALLY DID THE TRICK!

 

Yeah, I know... but what solved the issue was not padding the indicated parts, but replacing the card.

I have the same card and no pads there, and it works.

 

replacing the card? Why it can solve the issue? His card is the ES one which widezu69 using now, and different from the others.

svl7, can other versions vios solve my issue? Could you give me some more vbios, such as clevo and so on.

 

That's what he says in the article on mxm-upgrade, in the one you posted. They replaced the card and afterwards it worked. I don't think the pads make a difference. Chances are that the first card they tried was defective. And there's no word that this was an ES card. MXM-upgrade is not selling ES cards, they're the regular OEM version.

I posted it some pages ago, here. No idea whether it helps. It isn't modified.

 

ES one with 1120sp is power hungry. Those ICs have sth to do with the card's power supply module I think. They get more easily overheated than normal M6970.

 

The people who told me the message said that:
"To addition, MXM-upgrade only had one piece of DELL ES card which he tried to set on W870cu. However, since he sold the card to Ichime, they never add the process of 4 pads in the tutorial for the blue CLEVO 6970m."

 

But once they sold, at least one or the only one to ichime, who resold it to widezu69.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...6970m-your-m17x-r2-single-gpu-crossfirex.html

 

Hmm, interesting. Anyway, I can't really see how pads should help... pads don't make a heatsink.

 

Anyway, it is an opportunity to find out those paddings are useful or not.